


heathens (take it slow)

by mildlyobsessive



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Dark Comedy, Everyone is Dead, Gen, Grunge, I actually like this, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Plague, Post-Apocalypse, cause that song is everything rn, heathens inspired, ish, my first thought was serial killers, my second was twins living in the basement, not really - Freeform, this was my third, which I'm actually writing oops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-15 14:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7225462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildlyobsessive/pseuds/mildlyobsessive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Please.  This is the most anticlimactic excuse for the end of the world I've ever seen."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Heathens ruined me in the best kind of way.
> 
> (I'd recommend reading it while it's playing, like it's not a song fic but I just like the vibe okay bye)

The night air was thick and suffocating, the Ohio summer as stifling as always. It was relaxing, in a way. A constant variable in the never ending experiment that Tyler's life had become. The stars were suffocated with the soupy clouds coating the sky, a pinprick standing out here and there before it was quickly swallowed up. The sky was as hungry as everyone else was, nowadays.

The swing Tyler was resting on was old and rusty. His fingers danced along the aging chain anchoring him to the frame, scratched at the accumulated years settled on to the metal. It creaked as he pumped his legs, sending him flying forward a foot or two. The rest of the park was just as time-worn. No one bothering to maintain it, he supposed.

A light rustling sounded, and Tyler jumped, hand tightening around the chain. He planted his feet firmly on the ground, combat boots bringing him to a halt. "Ash?"

"Hi, Ty," came a voice to his left. A small light flickered on, illuminating Ashley's face a few feet away. Her hair, short and electric blue, was unkempt. 

"You scared me."

She pouted sardonically, brown eyes rolling playfully. "Sorry, Ty-Ty. Didn't realize you were so jumpy."

"Can you fucking blame me?"

Ashley plopped down on th swing next to him. "Of course not. Everyone's fucking terrified. Doesn't mean I can't tease you about it." She patted his knee through his overly torn up jeans.

Tyler grinned. "I wouldn't expect anything less of you."

She giggled, high and happy and child-like, and Tyler's stomach turned at the sound, at how so few were around to make it anymore. "Cigarette?" Ashley quipped, offering Tyler a worn pack of Marlboros, the corners of the box browned and curling. 

Tyler sighed in relief. "Please." He plucked one from the pack, offering it to Ashley, who dug around in the pocket of her worn leather jacket for a lighter. Her chipped black nails flicked on the tiny flame, and brought the spark to the tip of the cigarette. Tyler popped it in his mouth, inhaling deeply.

He laughed bitterly, felt his lungs fill with smoke, felt the fates chipping away at his allotted lifespan. "Never thought I'd be the type of kid who smoked."

Ashley leaned back on the swing, staring at the cloud-choked heavens. "Yeah, well, who thought any of this shit would ever happen?"

"Can't say I did." Tyler sucked in another drag.

"While we're on the extremely uncomfortable subject, I might as well get this out of the way: how are you holding up, really?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm fan-fucking-tastic, obviously. My parents are dead and I'm left to care for three teenagers. What could be better?"

"Hey, it was bound to happen eventually. Growing up, having kids, being normal," Ashley scoffed. "You would have ended up here either way."

He looked at her from the corner of his eye, annoyed. "I wasn't exactly ready to give up my life at the age of eighteen."

"Who fucking was?"

Tyler sighed, trying and failing to blow a smoke ring. "You're right. Sorry. You're going through the same thing. I'm being a selfish asshole."

Ashley snorted, "Please. My parents were dicks. I'm fine and dandy, thank you very much. Can stay up as late as I want now. Besides, that's not really what I meant."

"What?"

Her hand darted over to Tyler's jacket, pulled up his sleeve before he could protest. "Just wanted to check."

He flushed red, embarrassment coursing through him like lava bubbling from a volcano. With a jerk, he tugged his sleeve back down, refusing to look at his arm. He didn't like thinking about what he used to be like. Fuck, Ashley _knew_ he didn't like to think about it.  
"Why can't you just fucking drop it?" He spat.

"I'll fucking drop it when I'm sure you're fine."

"Ash, _no one's_ fine. It's just how it is now, okay? You're either a mess or dead. I'm not completely sure what's worse, to be honest."

She raised her messy eyebrows and pointed at him. "And _that_ is why I will continue to check, you idiot."

Tyler stubbed out his cigarette on the chain of the swing, throwing the remaining bit with all the force he possessed. He watched it bounce off a slide, ricocheting like a poorly aimed bullet. "You're impossible."

"Yet you love me." Ashley slid off the swing, clicking her phone screen on for a split second before sending the field plummeting back into darkness. "Uh, Ty? It's past midnight."

"Shit! Maddie's going to freak."

"This is why you bring you phone, Ty."

"What's the point of it anymore? There's no signal!" He began speed walking away, in the direction he assumed led to his house. Ashley skipped along, cigarette still smoking between her fingers, turning the path into a cheap high school haunted house. 

"Not for long, though, if the rumors hold any truth. People are saying that they're figuring out a way to get the cell towers back up."

Tyler dodged a pine tree, turning the corner onto a row of unimpressive strip malls and fast food chains. The whole street was dead, the buildings devoid of light. "Who is this mysterious 'they' who keeps solving all our problems?"

"I'm assuming the same highly intelligent young men and women who figured out to get running water and electricity. Who would have figured that the key to surviving the apocalypse would he people who paid attention in AP science courses?"

Tyler scuffed his feet on the gravel-coated road. "Please. This is the most anticlimactic excuse for the end of the world I've ever seen."

"Oh, I beg to differ, Tyler Joseph." Ashley pointed to a barren McDonald's, windows shattered and door boarded up. "Look at that. Olympus has fallen, my friend. Western society as we know it has crumbled."

"Damn, you must really miss those Big Macs."

Ashely snorted. "A world without McDonald's is not a world I am prepared to live in, Ty."

"Guess we're going to have to learn how to be fucking prepared, then."

A melodramatic sigh. "That we will, my friend. That we will."


	2. two

"Where _the fuck_ were you?"

Tyler winced, one foot through the front door. "Sorry, Mads." He could practically hear Ashley cackling from the driveway behind him.

His little sister rolled her eyes. "You can't keep pulling this shit, Tyler."

Tyler slammed the door, pulling off his shoes and sagging onto the faded sofa. "I said I was sorry, okay? I got held up with Ashley. Lost track of time. That's it."

Maddy narrowed her eyes, her expression closing off in that way Tyler recognized as her trying to avoid a sensitive topic. Maddy wasn't one for heart to hearts, much preferring heart to brain or brain to brain or brain to kidney or any other set of organs. 

"Go ahead. Say what you want to say but won't." Tyler sighed.

"It's just . . . you can't be late like that. Surely you can see how I would be worried."

"Yes, yes, gangs, coyotes, lack of parental supervision. All very dangerous things."

"That's not what I mean, Ty."

"If you're going to bring up what I think you're going to bring up, kindly disregard my attempt to get you to open up and let me go to bed."

"You can't keep pretending it didn't happen."

"Why the fuck not?" Tyler seethed, hands nearly shaking. A pit in his stomach was growing, a hole of dark memories and scratches and hospital wristbands and Maddy need to stopstop _stop now_.

"You tried to fucking _kill yourself_ , Tyler! And then you think you can just run off whenever you want and no one's going to be the slightest bit concerned?"

She was rageful now, tiny body poised to strike, eyes watering but slitted with resilience. She was the remnant of what he had done to her, what was left after he had ripped her into pieces and left a note to help her put herself back together again. Treated her like she was Humpty Dumpty, except he'd crossed his fingers and told the King's horses and men to try harder this time.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to defuse a bomb that had already detonated. "Will you _please_ let that go, Mads?"

"No, Ty, I fucking _won't._. And you can come lecturing me about forgiveness when you find your older brother bleeding out on the motherfucking bathroom floor!"

Tyler choked back the memory. "Bad choice of words. I know that wasn't something you can forget about. I fucked up, Mads. I know that, okay? My head was a mess and I wasn't thinking and . . . Jesus, I'm so fucking sorry. But . . . that was six months ago. And look, I'm still here."

"After everything, all the impossible shit that's gone down . . . I just get scared it'll get to much for you, Ty. That it'll get too bad and you won't ask for help again."

Tyler grasped his face in his hands, felt the dig of his short nails leaving their crescent-moon tattoos in his skin. Deep breath, one, two, three, talk: "How could you think for a single second that I would leave you and Zack and Jay alone? After Mom and Dad? After . . . everyone?"

Maddy didn't answer, instead collapsing next to him and wrapping herself around him. She smelled like lavender, the perfume that his mom always use to coat herself in, and the familiar scent wormed its way into his unwilling nostrils, filling him with an insatiable ache. Because, try as he might to imagine it was, this was not his mother, nor would she ever hug him again.

"I love you, you idiot." the girl that was not his mother breathed.

"I love you too, jerk," he sighed, leaning away from the embrace before the loneliness pounding in Tyler's veins found its way out in the form of tears. "Now get your ass to bed. You can act as maternal as you want about me being late, but I _am_ still in charge here."

She flounced off to her room, and Tyler sluggishly followed.

. . . 

Try as he might, Tyler could never escape the dreams. They were an unavoidable occurrence, something that had evolved into as normal a part of his day as brushing his teeth or making sure that they weren't running out of supplies.

The calming darkness of newly discovered sleep quickly morphed into his family room, TV playing softly. Tyler could recognize the scene, could place it from four months ago. He was sprawled out on the couch, small and scrawny, eyes sunken and arms more closely resembling stems than limbs. The past version of him was toying with the plastic hospital wrist band still around his wrist, fingers running methodically over the blunt material. It had been recent, his outburst (or breakdown or death wish- call it what you like), and his family was still giving him nervous sidelong glances, eyes prodding for the answers to the questions that they hadn't yet dared to ask.

A woman sitting next to Tyler turned her head, and his stomach twisted as his mother smiled at her broken son sympathetically. She reached out, gently halting his hand on its path to trace his new bracelet. She avoided the bandages encasing her sons arms with silent awareness. "You want to take that off, Ty?"

He shook his head numbly. His mother blinked twice, quickly. "Okay. But tell me if you want to throw it out. I'll cut it off for you." Her intention was clear in way that pierced both past and present Tyler to the core; _you will not be trusted with a pair of scissors._

His mother frowned at the TV, something in the near-silent commentary catching her attention. She dug around for the remote, jamming her thumb down on the volume button.

"-over two million already reported dead," the news anchor was reciting, her voice much too reserved for the weight of what she was saying. She couldn't care less, just wanted to get home where she could stop worrying about things that didn't impact her. She was dead now, Tyler was sure. Guess she could stop worrying now that she didn't have the capacity to. "and the numbers just keep flooding in. Experts haven't yet discerned where the virus originated from, or why it appears to be avoiding those from their early teens to those in their mid-twenties. 

"Subjects belonging to that age group have suffered little to no symptoms, even while others in their areas perish by the thousa-"

His mom slammed the mute button with all the force she possessed. "That's enough of that," she mused, speaking more for the pale boy slouched next to her than herself. "Let's get something to eat, okay?"

The living room dissolved into a cascade of inky nothingness, until Tyler could see his mother again. But she wasn't right, this time, but that wasn't a surprise, because, hell, _who was?_. Mrs Joseph was enveloped in the comforters draping her bed, Tyler's dad unconscious next to her. A younger version of himself was perched on the edge, rubbing her back. "It's going to be okay, Mom," he muttered, hospital wristband still standing out against his skin like snow in a barren desert.

And then he was awake again, back in his empty room, in his less-than-full house with a spare bedroom and too many chairs encircling the table downstairs. He was soaked in sweat and tears and whatever else, and the weight of his last lie sat like an anchor in his gut.


	3. three

Sleep had evaded him mercilessly afterwards, strung him out to season through exhaustion and poisonous thoughts. So, when the dawn finally came, warm and welcome against his heavy eyes, he was already downstairs, with breakfast for the kids already spread out on the table, awaiting their arrival. 

A knock on the door shattered the carefully constructed silence in the house, making Tyler jump. With a sigh, he pulled it open. "Hey, Ash."

"Morning," his friend crowed, mouth already scrunched around a cigarette. She pulled the cancer stick out of her mouth and blew a puff of the aromatic smoke in Tyler's face before letting herself in. 

"Ooooo, breakfast," she exclaimed, helping herself to a stale bagel, cigarette stubbed out and abandoned. "Perfect, I was starving. That's actually what I came to ask you about-"

"That's for the kids, come on." Tyler groaned, cutting her off

"Well then they better come get some before I eat it all, shouldn't they?" Ashley raised a messy eyebrow and, before Tyler could get a word in, screamed. "Maddy! Zack! Jay! Get your asses down here."

"Was that really necessary?" He asked, annoyance flickering through his voice. Ashley, as bright and blue and infinite as she may be, could be exhausting in her endless energy. 

"Absolutely," she replied as Jay came trudging down the stairs in flannel pajama pants, looking as disgruntled as a home post-tornado. "Good morning, brother dearest," Ashely beamed at the younger boy.

"We're not related," Jay growled back.

"Oh, but it's the thought that counts. Anyway, Tyler, I'm running low on supplies. Like beyond dangerously low. As in, I have absolutely no food."

"And so you came to eat mine?"

"Nope," Ashley mumbled around a mouthful of bread. "That was just an added bonus. I wanted to go see if there's anything left at the Walmart a few streets over and I was wondering if you wanted to come with?"

Tyler glanced at Jay. "Would you guys be okay if I left for a little while?"

His little brother shrugged, attention half on the back of the cereal box he had in front of him. "I'll be fine, but Maddy's going to freak if you leave without telling her again."

"Well, why don't _you_ tell her?"

Jay raised his eyebrows, making eye contact with Tyler in a brutally contemptuous fashion. "When was the last time Maddy listened to a word I said?"

"Point taken," Tyler groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Here," he scrawled a brief description of where he was going on a crumpled napkin, tossing it at Jay unceremoniously. "Give that to her when she gets her ass out of bed."

"Honestly, I'm surprised she slept through my wake-up call," Ashley lamented.

"Are we going or not?"

. . .

The Walmart was a decrepit sight, the parking light abandoned and untamed. A few cars were left here and there, their empty windows studded with the handprints of those who had fallen ill inside of them. The dead lived on only in the dead skin and dirt clotting on their belongings and the memories of shattered children too scared to recall them. 

The sliding doors were half open, a shopping cart shoved in between them. Both Tyler and Ashley hopped over it, the cold metal leaving red imprints on the palms of their hands as they made the leap.

"Fuck," Ashley breathed, taking in the ransacked remains of the supermarket. "It's been cleaned out."

She was right. The Walmart looked appropriately post-apocalyptic, shelves littered with left-over, useless items and wrappers. The lights above were out, only the massive skylights littered throughout the ceiling letting any light in at all.

"Well," Tyler sighed. "We might as well look around anyway."

"You think it's worth it?"

"You've already dragged my ass out here. I might as well get something to show for it."

They spent the next few moments silently picking through turned over boxes, looting through tattered erotic paperbacks (one of which Tyler did not miss Ashley slipping into her jacket pocket) and One Direction posters for anything useful. A few cangoods and bags of pretzels later, they stumbled upon the medicine aisle, lines of generic pill bottles toppled over.

Ashley grunted. "Huh. You would think that this would be one of the first things to go."

"I guess people weren't stupid enough to think that aspirin could cure it."

"Or maybe they were too stupid to realize that the prescription shit in the pharmacy might have come in handy at some point," Ashley pointed out. She hoisted herself over the pharmacy counter, going for what was left of the strong stuff. Tyler collapsed on one of the uncomfortable blue benches, watching his friend with raised eyebrows. 

"You good on meds, Ty?" Ashley inquired while she stared at labels. 

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. I've got plenty." A lie. He only had about a two weeks supply of what Jay had so lovingly deemed his "crazy pills," but he didn't need more. He was fine, he was strong, and he needed to stop relying so heavily on fickle, artificial happiness. It was about time he found the real thing. 

"You sure?"

"I fucking know my own meds, Ashley."

"Fine, fine," she sighed in defeat, hands held up in surrender with pill bottles still encased in her thin fingers. "No need to get pissy. But I'm taking some good stuff for me." She tossed a few bottles into her bag. Adderall- Tyler guessed. Maybe some oxy. 

"You an addict now?"

"Not an addict, Ty-Ty. A casual user at most. And idiots who haven't realized that dealers aren't necessary anymore will pay good money for this shit."

"Money's not worth shit, Ash."

She shrugged. "Food, cigarettes, whatever. They pay in the currency of the times. Come on, there's more shit to look through." Ashley hopped over the counter again before swinging her bag over her back and setting off down another random aisle. They passed the frozen food section, the stench of rotting meat and too-ripe fruit bringing tears to Tyler's eyes.

Ashley suddenly stopped, sending Tyler careening into her with a jolt. "Hey!" He snapped, but she was already gone, set off down some nondescript aisle he hadn't glanced twice at. "The fuck are you doing?" He called, annoyance colliding with the syllables rolling off of his tongue. 

"Come here," she barked.

He obeyed, and found her examining something black and metal, the object shadowed in the dim lighting. She swung around and Tyler jumped back. "The fuck?!" He gasped, staring down the barrel of the handgun Ashley possessed. The hole in its snout was an eye promising death and pain and a shudder went through him. He'd hated these things since he was a child, since his dad had drug him into the woods and curled his hand over Tyler's on the trigger, made him shoot deer and rabbits and other things that ran away at his cries. 

Ashley didn't answer, instead turning the pistol around and offering it to him handle-first. He shook his head mutely. "Take the goddamn gun, Ty." She shook it at him, watching the cringe in his eyes, the way his fingers wrapped too tightly around the straps of his backpack. 

"I don't want to." His voice was barely a whisper.

"Please." Ashley was serious now, truly, deadly serious, and Tyler was so unaccustomed to it that it frightened him. "Please just take it."

"Why? Aren't you scared I'm going to blow my brains out with it? Aren't you and my sister supposed to be my own personal little suicide prevention squad?" His voice was bitter and brutal in the quiet store, the awful acoustics sending the words bouncing in a way that made them both flinch. Cowards, the two of them. Such scared children, playing at adulthood as if it were a twisted game on the playground.

"I trust you, Tyler," Ashley exhaled. "I'm sorry if it doesn't seem like it, but I do. Yes, I worry about you and yes, sometimes I'm an overprotective bitch in the process of showing that worry, but I _fucking trust you_. I want you to take the fucking gun because I'm worried about you in other ways too, okay?" She stared at him, awaiting an answer that he didn't give. He just stared, eyes on the hilt of the weapon she still had extended to him.

"There aren't rules anymore," she spat out, desperation and panic leeching into her words. _Just take it, you stubborn idiot_. "There aren't laws people have to abide by. Or maybe the laws still do apply, but that doesn't change the fact that there's no one around to reinforce them. People are idiots, Tyler, brutal, sadistic idiots, and now they're brutal, sadistic idiots with no reason to hold back. If you don't take this, and something were to happen to you, I would never be able to forgive myself. And I know that if you don't take this and something were to happen to the kids, to Maddy or Jay or Zack, you wouldn't be able to forgive yourself, either. So make this easier on everyone, will you? Just take it."

Slowly, so, so slowly, his hand reached out, fingers wrapping around the handle, looking small against the cold metal of the weapon. A child's hand in a world without children. Irony was a bitch. 

Tyler pocketed the gun quietly. His eyes never left Ashley's face, as if he was steeling himself. "I'm going to need ammo, then," was all he muttered.

His friend let out a sigh, relief coursing through her as she grabbed a few rounds off of a shelf and tossed them to Tyler. "Here."

He threw them in his backpack. "Thanks for killing the mood, Ash."

She laughed. "Sorry, Ty-Ty." A glance at her useless phone screen had her grimacing. "It's getting late. We should get going."

They both started towards the entrance, boot soles clacking on overly-polished linoleum in the quiet. "The real question" Tyler began. "Is why the fuck Walmart sells guns in the first place."

"America, Ty. America."

. . .

She left him at his house, scuffing the sole of her worn combat boots against his driveway as he headed inside. "There's a party," she blurted as he went to close the door. 

"What?" 

"A party, tonight, downtown, some rooftop. You're coming with me."

He raised his eyebrows. "First you lecture me about safety and force me to get a gun, and now you're suddenly all about partying on a rooftop with strangers? What a change of heart."

She cracked a grin at her sweet, stubborn jackass of a best friend. "I know these people. They're cool, okay? And you could use a few drinks."

"As long as I don't accidentally trip and fall off the roof. I'm a clumsy drunk, you know."

"I'll catch you," she said with a giggle. "You in?"

"I'm in," he replied, and the door closed unceremoniously in her face with a resounding slam. 

. . .

Tyler was dangerously close to the edge of a rooftop but who cared? Because he was drunk; gloriously, mind-numbingly drunk, intoxicated in a way that made the word simultaneously speed up and screech to a halt. Everything was light and easy and giggles were as easy to produce as breath and everything was okay. He kicked a pebble on the edge of the high rise he was currently balancing on, watching it drop like, well, a stone into the unnatural darkness of the Columbus streets. 

It was quiet everywhere but up here, where people were laughing and smiling with an intensity that bordered on desperation. Kids with their legs dangling over the edge of a fifteen story drop, leaning back on their elbows to look at the stars that light pollution had freed. Bottles were everywhere, passed from hand to hand with a dark generosity, with an understanding of how well-needed a drink was. 

"To forgetting," Tyler had jokingly toasted to a girl who had thrust his first cup into his hand around an hour ago.

She'd laughed a little too loudly, smiled a little too earnestly before she'd raised her bottle of vodka in reply. "To me getting drunk enough to fall off this fucking roof!"

That's not what Tyler was planning on doing, though. Falling or jumping or plummeting like a kicked pebble. It was just that the city was so empty and Tyler was so full of so much _shit_ , and he supposed opposites attracted was all.

A hand suddenly gripped his elbow, sending whatever had made its way into his cup sloshing into the ground. He frowned, following the hand up to the body that must own it. "What're you doin'?" His words weren't slurred, not quite. He wasn't there yet.

The owner of the intruding appendage was someone Tyler didn't recognize. A boy, around his age, his pink hair glinting like a gem stone in the glow from the fire pit someone had dragged up here. He gave Tyler a small grin, guiding farther away from the ledge. "It'd be a shame for you to fall when things are just starting to get fun," the stranger said with a laugh.

"Thanks," Tyler hiccuped. "I guess."

"Honestly, I don't know who thought having a whole bunch of drunk people on a rooftop would end well," the boy continued. 

"It does seem more like an accident waiting to happen than anything else," Tyler admitted.

"Exactly!"

"To be fair, a friend of mine did promise to catch me if I fell, but I have zero idea where she ran off to."

"What friend?" The boy's dark eyes reflected the bonfire and it made Tyler dizzy in a way he didn't totally hate.

"Ashley. Blue hair. Y'know her?"

The stranger grinned teeth white and straight in a way Tyler's sexuality couldn't hope to relate to as he exclaimed "Ashley Frangipane?!"

"You called?" A voice over Tyler's shoulder crowed, and Ashley herself stumbled out from the horde of people surrounding the fire, bottle in hand. A cocky half-grin had moved onto her face, unpacking its things as if it intended to hang around for the long run. It was almost difficult to see her as the same person that had pushed that gun into his hands so desperately not four hours before.

"Speak of the devil," the boy whispered to Tyler, as if they were co-conspirators in a crime Tyler wasn't aware he'd committed.

Tyler laughed. "The devil might be a bit of an exaggeration. A demon, on the other hand, would be a completely accurate description."

"I'm right 'ere," Ashley slurred, clearly much more drunk than Tyler was. "That's a bit offensive."

The boy next to Tyler snorted, looking her over. "You look great, Ashley." The sarcasm was evident in the flat tone of his voice. Ashley was a mess, hair sticking up at unnatural angles and eyes more wild than usual. The feux-leather of her jacket was sticky with a substance Tyler _really_ hoped was beer. 

She flicked Tyler's companion off with a small grin. "Nice t'see you too, Josh."

Tyler looked from the boy -Josh, he presumed- from Ashley. "I assume that's a yes on whether y'know her."

"Aw, were you talking about me?" Ashley piped in. "M'flattered, boys, really."

"I was telling . . . Josh," Tyler tasted the name, brief and sweet on his bitter tongue, "about a certain promise you made to catch me if/when I fell off this roof. A promise that you utterly failed to come through on."

"Without me, disaster very well may have struck," Josh added, stone-faced.

"Sorry, Ty. I was a tiny bit distracted."

Before Tyler could muster a scoff and a sardonic remark, Josh's eyes widened slightly. "Ohhhhhh, so _you're_ Tyler, then," he sighed.

". . . Yes?" Tyler answered, irrationally terrified of getting the answer wrong.

"She talks about you a lot when she's drunk," Josh fake whispered to him, sending Tyler blushing rather aggressively. 

"I swear to God, Ash, if you go around spewing a highlight reel of my embarrassing moments whenever you have a few drinks I'm going prohibition on your ass," he spat.

"I'm a thousand percent innocent," his extremely drunk friend countered.

Josh looked Tyler dead in the eyes. "Your middle name's Robert and your sister, quote, is an 'overprotective bitch in the best way.'"

"Can't really argue with that."


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And she supposed it did fuck her up. Fucked her I'm a cold-sweat-2-am-nightmare kind of way, a check-on-Tyler-twice-a-night kind of way, a my-hands-shake-constantly kind of way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I enjoy Maddy in this fic and therefore must torture her relentlessly 
> 
> Also triggers galore so watch out please please please please please
> 
> I'm sorry this is so awful

Maddy used to be scared of the dark. No, she supposed that wasn't an accurate statement. The absence of light wasn't what had frightened her, but rather what it could be hiding. She figured it was a pretty normal thing for little kids to be terrified of. She'd seen one too many horror movie trailers, listened to too many of Zack's scary stories, narrated with a flashlight held under his chin, and boom- every corner harbored its very own serial killer, every shift of the floorboards a demon come to eat her. She couldn't sleep for weeks.

Her mom would tuck her in, give her a kiss goodnight on the forehead, and flick off the light, leaving her only daughter alone with whatever lurked in the shadows of her bedroom. To Maddy, it felt like the ultimate betrayal. As if the woman she had been reassured time and time again wanted nothing more than to care for her had thrown her into the lion's den. A cave that, despite her Sunday school's teachings, had a rather disappointing lack of the Holy Spirit or lion bodyguards. 

She'd kicked and screamed for her mother, who would always oblige her daughter with one and only one visit per night, where she would look under the bed, in the closet, and in every solitary nook and cranny of the room to prove that there was nothing there for her to fear. Maddy would exhale, relief evident in her posture, and her mother would put her back into bed and shut the door with a resounding _click_. And, without fail, the monsters would crawl out of there hiding places and start their nightly tirade once again. 

And that's when she would go to her brother's room.

Tyler was the closest, which was good in case anything had snuck out of her bedroom when she hadn't been looking and was waiting to ambush her in the hallway. She would look both ways- just as her Safety Town teacher had taught her to do before crossing the street- and dash across the hall. Honestly, Maddy probably would have gone to Tyler even if he had lived on the other side of the house. Zack and Jay just weren't options. They would just laugh at her for being a scaredy-cat and a baby and slam the door in her face. But she was infinitely glad that God hadn't hated her enough to make her run all the down the stairs in the pitch black just to get her oldest brother. It was probably because she'd returned that wallet she'd found on the floor of Walmart the week before. Karma.

She'd slowly open Tyler's door- always, always wincing at how the un-oiled hinge squeaked in protest- and slip into the room beyond.

He would startle, sitting up quickly. His hair stuck up haphazardly, as if it too had been caught unaware by her arrival. "Sorry," she'd whisper to him. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"S'okay," he'd grumble, sleep slurring his words. "Monsters again?"

She nodded, and he had to squint to make out the gesture. She'd inched towards him, as he sighed. "Y'know they're not real, right? Mom would never let anything hurt you."

"What if they're real and Mom just doesn't believe me?" She asked, getting nearer still to her big brother.

"It's all in your head, Mads."

"But what if they're _not_?"

"Then I'll beat them up for you."

"Promise?"

"Promise," Tyler sighed, and Maddy watched him flop back down into the pile of pillows atop his bed. She was quiet for a moment, waiting. Finally he groaned, "Get in before I change my mind."

She smiled, relieved at the affirmation, and hopped into Tyler's bed. He held up the blanket for her to slide under, which she did without hesitation. "Jesus, Mads, your feet are _freezing_."

"Sorry," she giggled, snuggling up into a little ball of eight-year-old girl. Tyler's body heat had already warmed up the mound of blankets, making her feel toasty and safe. 

It was quiet for a warm minute, until a creak ran through the floorboards and Maddy flinched again. "Just the house," Tyler mumbled knowingly. "It's the wood settling."

"Why does it do that?"

Tyler gave her what she assumed was a shrug, though in retrospect it was rather hard to tell when he buried under his comforter. "To scare paranoid little girls, probably."

Maddy gave him a well-placed kick with her freezing feet. "I'm not paranoid! It's just . . . I don't know. Everything's scarier when it's dark. I don't know why."

"It's because you can't see," Tyler told her. "And humans are naturally scared of that. We used to have to be able to see threats coming, or we could be in serious trouble. It's okay to be scared of the dark, Mads. It's good, actually. Your instincts are top notch. Straight out of the Stone Age."

"Do y'want me to kick you again? Because I will."

"One more kick and you're evicted from this bed, young lady." 

Maddy ignored the fact that she wasn't quite sure what 'evicted' meant- though she was willing to bet she wouldn't like it happening to her- and the condescending use of 'young lady.' "You pinky-swear you'll beat up any monsters that come in here?" She held up her smallest finger for the oath.

Tyler hooked his finger with hers. "I pinky-promise, cross my heart and hope to die, Mads. Now can I _please_ go to sleep? I have a geometry test tomorrow."

Maddy crossed her arms and stuck out her bottom lip. It was the pout that had gotten her ice cream last month when mom had said no at first, and she was confident it would be just as affective with Tyler. "How do I know you're not going to tell me they're not real and leave me with the monsters."

Tyler laughed. "I'll never leave you, idiot."

She kicked him again, partially for good measure but mostly because he'd called her a naughty name- mom had yelled for _hours_ when Jay had called Zack that- but Tyler was already asleep.

. . .

Five years later (before the virus, before the responsibility, before everything went to shit, before) the bathroom door wouldn't open. Thirteen year-old Maddy swore as she hit the unrelenting wood. It didn't give, unsurprisingly, but left her knuckles split and her hand was consumed by a tsunami of biting pain. Zack must have left it locked just to piss her off. She made a mental note to give him a makeover while he slept. 

"Tyler!" She yelled, hoping to enlist her brother's help, because, shit, she _really_ wanted to take shower. "Zack locked the bathroom again!"

There wasn't an answer, which didn't strike Maddy as weird. Her parents weren't home either, having taken Jay and Zack to their baseball games, and it was extremely likely Tyler had slipped out to go hang out with that girl Ashley. Maddy wasn't sure how she felt about that friendship.

She shoved her oldest brother's door open, checking to make sure he wasn't just ignoring her plead for help. But, no, Tyler's room was empty. She frowned at the made bed, the pile of pillows she'd spent so many nights sleeping on arranged neatly, at how the floor had been recently vacuumed. Unusual, for Tyler. Mom'd probably forced him to make his room look less like the homeless shelter it usually resembled.

"Guess I'll do it myself then," she whispered to herself, annoyed and wanting to fucking shower already. She reached up above the door frame, feeling out where her dad stored the little lock picking kit he kept for times like this. Pulling it down, she stuck the little pick into the bathroom lock, moving it around for a little while. Just as she realized she had absolutely no idea what she was waiting for, a little _click_ sounded, the door coming loose.

She sighed, gathering up her towel from the linen closet before pushing the door open with her foot.

She dropped the towel.

Her lungs couldn't find breath, as if the air had all fled the room, been leeched out through a vacuum, and maybe it had, maybe that would explain why.

Why Tyler wasn't moving, why he was a lying on the ground so still and pale in a way Maddy had only seen from TV corpses and her grandmother's funeral, why there was ruby adorning the floor and her brother's clothing like a signet ring, like jewelry that cost more than it was worth. 

She stood there, shaking as if an earthquake had occurred on some fault line she'd just opened up, trying to understand why her brother didn't look like her brother, why the monsters from under her bed had finally snuck out of her room.

"Tyler?" Her voice was cracked and shaking and she fell next to him, shaking him with all of the power the seismic waves coursing through her possessed. "Ty?"

His head rolled back but his eyes didn't open and his mouth didn't move and _shit shit shit shit shit_

"Wake up. Wake the _fuck_ up, Tyler." She breathed. "Oh my God. Oh dear God, oh God, shit shit shit." She scrambled around him, snatching up a wrist to try to check his pulse like how the Red Cross lady had taught her.

Her fingers hit blood and blood and more blood. 

"Oh my God," she exhaled, and she didn't know why she wasn't screaming, why she wasn't hyperventilating. Maybe she was in shock, maybe she was just fucking weird, but at the moment she honestly didn't care because Tyler's entire arm was split open like Moses parting the Red fucking Sea and this was bad bad bad.

Her fingers, shaking uncontrollably and dripping her big brother's blood all over her jeans, snatched her phone.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"My- my brother . . . I don't know what to do."

"Okay, sweetie, breathe. What's happened to your brother?"

"He- the door was locked and he's bleeding, he's bleeding a lot." She couldn't take her eyes off of Tyler's skin, his paling flesh juxtaposed with the blood pooling on it.

"Where's he bleeding from, honey?"

"His arm, his- his wrists," because she could see, now, that Ty's other arm was just as maimed, and her breath hitched in her throat.

"Okay, there's an ambulance coming right now, sweetie. Can you put some pressure on your brother's arms? It'll help slow down the bleeding until we can get there."

She obliged, wincing at the squelch of frothy red liquid bubbling up. Her stomach did somersaults, threatening to empty itself all peer the ground. "Okay . . . I am."

She doesn't remember much, after that. She was in shock, or catatonic, or _something_ that required her to get psych evaluations galore at the hospital she practically lived in for the next week. She wouldn't leave him. Even if he'd tried to ditch her. 

According to the doctors, walking in on your older brother's thus far successful suicide attempt could fuck a person up. Who would've guessed?

And Maddy supposed that it did fuck her up. Fucked her in a cold-sweat-2-am-nightmare kind of way, a check-on-Tyler-twice-a-night-kind-of-way, a my-hands-shake-constantly kind of way.

It fucked her up, and that was why she was sitting in the living room waiting for Tyler to get home from whatever party Ashley had dragged him off to. Why she wouldn't breathe quite right until he walked through the front door and why she'd check on him as soon as he went to bed.

It fucked her up good, and she still wasn't sure Tyler understood that.


	5. five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tyler personifies the saying "no homo" and Jenna doesn't believe it for a second

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually really long for me wow

Tyler wasn't exactly sure how it was possible that no one had plummeted to their death over the course of the night, but he decided to write it off as a "sorry I killed your friends and family" gift from God himself and not push his luck. Because it was morning, maybe six or seven am, and he'd ended up passed out on a shitty fold-up lawn chair at some point last night-or maybe it was this morning. Who gave a shit, really?

He'd woken up, eyes crusted shut from not enough sleep and head foggy from too much alcohol, Ashley still sound asleep next to him. Assorted partygoers were draped at odd angles all over, and Tyler wasn't nearly hungover enough to manage to not notice a couple wearing a bit less than what was socially acceptable curled into one another against the entrance to the stairwell. 

" _Jesus_ ," Tyler spat empathetically as he became aware of the throbbing headache omnipresently hovering over him. He looked around for Josh, and, not seeing him, couldn't help but feel vaguely disappointed. He'd thought they'd acquired something resembling a friendship last night, and, though of course Josh was under absolutely no obligation to be tied to him or anything, the abandonment stung a little. 

And, fucking hell, speaking of abandonment, Maddie was probably having a mental breakdown at home. And Tyler knew that he had fucked up, and fucked up _bad_ , because his little sister worried much more than was necessary, but he couldn't pretend that he didn't understand why, and Tyler also knew that Maddie felt it was her responsibility to help fill in for the roll of their mother. 

Just the though of his mom, a little too much perfume but always just a big enough grin, made his heart throb in a way that was most definitely not suited for post-party hangover headspace. But he missed her, fuck, he missed her so fucking much, and Tyler found himself wallowing in that hole in his life.

He missed her hands, the way they glided over him as they pulled him into a hug, how they caressed his forehead to check his temperature when he was sick. He missed the way she cooked- not because she had to, but because she loved to do so and she also loved them, and, as she had once put it, "What's better than combining two of my most favorite things?" 

And it scared him so fucking much that he could remember the most irrelevant things about her, but he was starting to forget the sound of her voice when she would sing old church songs around the house on Sunday morning or what color her eyes were precisely. He could feel her floating away, piece by piece, as if she was a jigsaw puzzle and the pieces just kept on falling between the couch cushions and he couldn't get them out, no matter how much he reached. 

And why was it that he lost all the good memories, the things he could feel on the tip of his tongue- or, brain, Tyler supposed- but he could never seem to shake the ones that he would like nothing more to be able to erase from his recollection? Because the look on his mother's face that week in the hospital and the sound of sobs, hysterical and desperate in a way Tyler was completely responsible for, outside of his room were still engrained on the insides of his eyelids for him to be forced to relive every time he closed his eyes. The way she had looked the week before her body gave out on her, shattered and rotting like fucking roadkill found on the side of the interstate, was still oh-so vivid. And how the hell was that fair? That he got to keep to the mind-numbingly horrible as the good floated away, balloons on a breeze moving too fast for him to keep up with? In what kind of universe was that in any way okay, for a mother to leave her children and then her memory to follow suit?

And it wasn't like Tyler didn't miss his dad, because he did. But he had never been around that much, always off on business trips halfway across the world and golfing at fancy country clubs that made him feel special just because he could afford to use them. And there was just something irreplaceable between a child and his mother, a nurturing, loving, kind of cheesy shit, which Maddy, try as she might, couldn't hope to replicate. 

Ashley chose that precise moment to stir, arms stretching as she let out an odd kind of mewl and consequently shaking Tyler into their rather bleak reality. "Morning," Tyler mumbled.

"Am I the only one _fucking dying_ here?" She groaned, her fingers knotted in her matted hair like they would somehow quell her headache, which, considering just how _wasted_ she had gotten last night, without a doubt rivaled Tyler's. 

"Everyone's fucking dying," stammered some boy Tyler didn't know from his spot on Ashley's other side.

"That's good to fucking know, Brendon, but it was a rhetorical fucking question, so shut the fuck up." Ashley never was the most generous when she felt like shit, and Tyler supposed there was no reason for today to be any different.

Brendon flicked her off before rolling back onto his side and letting himself slip back into blissful, Ashley Frangipane-free unconsciousness. 

Ashley glanced around. "Where'd Josh go?"

Tyler shrugged, fidgeting with the hem of his sweatshirt sleeves. "No idea. I woke up and he was gone. Maybe he went home after we passed out?"

Ashley pursed her lips. "Maybe. It just doesn't seem like something he'd do. Leave without telling anyone, y'know?

"Wait, exactly how well do you know this guy? Because last night you made it sound like a casual acquaintanceship, like circumstances-pending friends _at best_. But now you're doing a fucking personality analysis on his morning-after behavior, and, frankly, it's a bit conflicting."

"Morning after?" Ashley smirked, shit-eating grin proudly displayed on her face. "Did something happen last night that I should know about, Ty?"

"Actually shut up," Tyler decided to just laugh the comment off. "But, really, how well do you two know each other?" Maybe he was a bit too persistent, and maybe that was because Josh was just a bit too nice and a bit too cute, but that was beside the point, okay?

Ashley shrugged and then winced at the movement, cradling her head in her hands. "Not that well. I met him about a year before everything went to shit, but we only ever really talk at parties and stuff."

A chill breeze blew over Tyler, causing him to burrow deeper into his sweatshirt to escape the brisk morning air. "A _year_? Then how have I never met him before?"

Ashley narrowed her eyes, seeing right through him in that annoying best-friend kind of way. "You seem a little too interested in this. _Was_ there any truth in your morning after comment, Ty?" She was only half-joking, and Tyler knew it.

"What the fuck? Of course not," Tyler groaned, maybe overcompensating just a tad, but, you know what, it's the end of the world, so fuck it. 

"Okay, _Jesus_ ," Ashley sighed. "My head hurts too much for this."

"Maybe you shouldn't have drank half of the booze supply. Just saying."

"Hey, Tyler, maybe you should take Brendon's approach and shut the fuck up. Just saying."

Tyler decided to do just that, and presented his middle finger in a very Brendon-esque fashion. 

More people were stirring now, startling awake only to look at sticky fingers and empty bottles with halfhearted groans and throbbing headaches. One boy lurched, spilling the contents of his stomach over the edge of the roof. Everyone in his general vicinity winced at the brutal unpleasantness. "Fucking hell," Ashley whispered. "Is he alright?"

Before Tyler got around to answering, the door to the roof slammed open. Four or five people jumped to their feet, nervous and on-edge like street urchins accustomed to ever-imminent threat. In a way, Tyler supposed that's what they all were. Parent-less, luxury-less, hopeless. And maybe that was all that could be expected of them in such a situation, but that didn't change that fact that they hated themselves for being so young and so unprepared and always so, so fucking scared of what was coming through the door next.

But, this time, their paranoia proved unnecessary, as it was only Josh and that girl who had been oh-so quick to joke about falling off the roof the night prior. "Hey," Josh called, seemingly to Tyler (and Tyler's heart didn't speed up in the slightest, how dare you insinuate that pssshhh no). 

"Hi!" Tyler grinned, his eyes flitting to the boxes Josh and his friend were hauling. "What'd you bring?"

Josh returned his smile in earnest, flipping open the lid of the box and tossing him a small object that Tyler almost missed- but _didn't_ , thank God. "Where the _fuck_ did you _find_ these?" Tyler screeched in outrage. But it was the good, if rather jealous, kind of outrage, the kind where Tyler hadn't seen a fucking Poptart in four months and simply needed to know where this magical pastry-filled heaven Josh had visited was located.

"I have a stash," Josh laughed. "They were my addiction before . . . everything, y'know? Me and Jenna thought everyone could use some breakfast."

"You _absolute_ saint!" Ashley piped in, relieving the girl-Jenna-of one of her parcels. "Cookies and cream! How did you know?"

Jenna rolled her eyes, but smiled all the same. She really was quite pretty, Tyler realized, now that he could see her without the cover of firelight and drunkenness. "I'm psychic," she joked to Ashley. 

Josh made his way over to Tyler, leaving the gifts he bared over by Brendon. "Sleep well?"

Tyler shrugged "Fine, I guess. You?"

Josh let out a small giggle that made Tyler's stomach do a back handspring before totally botching the landing and ending up sprawled on the ground with some broken bones. Which is to say that he was a mess, but he'd already established that, he was quite sure. "Didn't sleep."

"What? You were sitting next to me when _I_ passed out."

Josh held up a hand. "Let me rephrase. I _couldn't_ sleep. And neither could Jenna, apparently, so we decided that a breakfast run was in order."

Tyler pulled his sweatshirt sleeves over his hands. "Why couldn't you sleep?"

Josh's face crumbled like a fucking arts and crafts project, and Tyler couldn't help but feel like it was his duty to take up the glue stick and safety scissors to mend him himself. But how could he be expected to do that? When he couldn't even decide whether he was capable of fixing _himself_ , if he wanted to learn how to float or simply let himself sink like the stone that, until rather recently, he had firmly believed himself to be? When he was as much of a ward as a father to his siblings, when he didn't know which he'd prefer of the two?

Josh's face shattered, a mirror Tyler had punched out of pure spite, and Tyler could see why on his face, etched in the smile lines and tiny wrinkles around Josh's eyes. The wrinkles shouldn't have been there in the first place. Because Josh was too young and too pretty and looked far too alive to have that mark of experience engraved on him. Only those who have yet to experience much of life truly enjoy it. After one has seen all there is worth seeing, there is only pressure, and responsibility, and wrinkles, and other things Tyler used to be so certain he didn't want. Yet here he was, without a hint of a choice in the matter. 

Anyway, Josh had seen shit and Tyler could see it engraved in him as if he was a Rosetta Stone yet to be deciphered. Now, certain that he'd fucked it all up, shook the tree, let the boat set sail, call it what you will, he desperately tried to backpedal. "Sorry, it's just . . . y'know, hangover and everything. I didn't mean to kill the mood, I really didn't, can we just rewind, maybe? 

Josh shook his head aggressively. "No, it's fine. I just . . . y'know, don't sleep too well. I haven't in a while. Don't feel bad about it, really."

Tyler just sat for a moment, awkward and fidgeting in his seat. "Okay."

"Okay."

"Maybe 'okay' will be our-"

"Tyler, I like you, but I swear to God if you quote that book I will throw you off this roof." And Josh sounded like he was _probably_ joking, but, just to be safe, Tyler decided to shut his mouth.

They laughed, then. And it felt unnatural in their mouths, as if it were a foreign tongue. It was too loud and too cheerful and they felt as if they could feel the buildings around them settling in discomfort, corpses shifting fitfully within them, but they laughed all the same.

. . .

He had gone home alone, Ashley too hungover to escort him, and by the time he reached the front door the willful ignorance that had drowned that rooftop had dissipated and left him ragged and gasping. He felt hollow and empty and a whole bunch of other words over-used by emo kids and tumblr posts. And maybe that had something to do with his meds, or lack thereof them, but Tyler couldn't give less of a shit about his fucking meds, because, honestly, he had other things on his mind.

Tyler slammed the door open, kicking his shoes off and making for the stairs to his room. But he only made it about halfway before Maddy, sallow and worried-looking, came into sight. She was slumped in a recliner, clad in the previous night's clothes with her fingers entwined in her lap.

"Hey," Tyler whispered, shaking her gently. "I'm home."

Her eyes were groggy as they lifted open, pupils dilating in the light. She nodded once, looking utterly exhausted, before letting her lids flutter shut again without fanfare. 

Tyler made his way upstairs, collapsing into bed and pulling his legs up to his chest. The imprint of the gun, bulging from under his mattress where he'd stashed it, dug into his back. The bed creaked under his weight and the covers were stained with sweat and tears and maybe blood, how was he supposed to know? He was a dead butterfly pinned to a cork board and that's how he fell asleep, twisting and turning to try and escape the tacks tearing into him.

. . . 

When he woke up, it was dark. Suffocatingly so, in fact, and Tyler tossed the blankets off the bed unceremoniously and clambered to the floor. He wasn't sure what time it was, but it hardly mattered, as there wasn't anything to be on time _for_ , and so he satisfied himself with just glancing out the window and noting how high the moon was in the sky. Not that he had any idea what the height of the moon entailed exactly, but it was better than nothing. 

The window opposite his was dusty and dark, empty in a way that settled in Tyler's stomach. His neighbors had had a little girl of around four or five, and that had been her nursery. She used to stand in front of her window and wave at Tyler with a pudgy little-kid hand, smiling a baby tooth smile. Whenever he looked sad, she would furrow her eyebrows and wave harder. Ruby, her name had been. Tyler wondered if she'd been buried or if she was still in there, crumpled in her room unmoving. Had her parents gone first and left her alone, or had they been there to comfort her through the worst of it? It was a morbid thought, no doubt, but Tyler supposed that this was a morbid world, and survival of the fittest entailed adaptation. Evolution, be it horrific or comfortable, was the only way to survive. 

Tyler slammed the window shut and pulled the curtains closed with a thud, done looking at a dead girl's nursery. He pulled on his jacket, faux leather chaffing his skin, but, damn it, he was a badass and he'd stick it out. He clambered into the hallway, leaving his door firmly shut, before peaking into Zack and Jay's room. They were both asleep, and Tyler reacted appropriately as he quietly tiptoed downstairs. 

Maddy was sitting on the couch. And why Tyler _still_ felt like a child caught sneaking out he didn't know, but he froze under her stare. 

"Where are you going?" The question was demanding, yes, a bit nosy and disgustingly worried in its tone. But it wasn't accusing, wasn't angry. And yet Tyler felt something inside of him crack like an ice cube dumped in warm water. 

"Outside. Or do I not have your permission to break the apparent house-arrest I'm under?"

Maddy blinked. "I-I wasn't. Tyler, you're not under house arrest. Of course you're not. I was jus-"

"Oh? I'm _not_ under house arrest?" Tyler spat. And he didn't know why he was being so awful, so uncharacteristic in who he believed himself to be, except his parents hadn't put Maddy in charge when they were on their death bed, no, that was _him_ , and she had no right to be taking that place. That was his right, his inheritance in the only last will and testament that still held any relevance, not hers. He was being irrational and high-strung, and he knew it as the words flew off his tongue, but still he made no attempts to ease their velocity. "Then what would you prefer calling it, Maddy? Suicide watch? Am I just grounded? I guess I didn't handle this situation right. By all means, let me rephrase. May I, pretty fucking please with a cherry on top, go outside for some fresh goddamn air? If you say no, I'll completely understand." He waited, eyes wide in mock obedience, blood coursing through him with the same sting as venom.

Maddy turned around and walked upstairs. Tyler watched her hand shake on the hand rail.

" _Shit_ he hissed, tugging his fingers through his hair and embracing the sharp sting as his roots were pulled tight against his scalp. He contemplated going after her, apologizing or explaining or _something_ , but he found himself instead stomping through the front door and slamming it defiantly behind him. It was a childish gesture, but he deemed it appropriate. 

Tyler sprawled in the middle of the road, head in line with the yellow dividing line, arms slightly spread as if he were constructing an angel out of asphalt. Fumbling in his jacket pocket for a loose cigarette and a lighter, he soon become immersed in one glowing ember among all the dark windows, one boiling point among all the cold bodies. 

Tyler knew it was an unhealthy habit. A coping method, yes, but perhaps a method that cost more than it was worth. And he chuckled as the thought passed from ear to ear because, of course, cigarettes were as free as everything else was nowadays, and money was nothing more than a fire starter and a history lesson. No, he paid in the numbered days of his life now. Life expectancy was no longer a reassurance and more of a fantasy. And perhaps Tyler could feel weeks and months and years he may never get to see trickling away with every inhalation of smoke and perhaps that was why he did it. 

He laid in the middle of the road and smoked and thought and maybe cried- he wasn't quite sure, but by the time his cigarette had burned down to barely more than a stub his cheeks were wet and his back ached from the gravel strewn about the road. 

He was only startled out of his pathetic onset of self pity by footsteps echoing from down the street. Tyler, laying there quietly in perhaps what was nothing more than a stupid decision, listened to the quickly approaching yet gently lulling thud of soles against concrete. He slowly pulled himself into a sitting position, his knees pulled up to his chest and stub of cigarette between his fingers. And maybe he should move, see if this person was someone to be concerned with, but he simply couldn't find that kind of energy or that level of giving a shit anywhere inside himself. 

He squinted at the figure nearing him. Whoever they were, they were coated by the shadows of trees stark against moonlight, and he couldn't make out much of a feature, even from the relatively close distance. Suddenly, the person stopped around ten feet short of him, pulling up on the black beanie that had been covering much of their face with darkness. "You're Tyler, right?"

Tyler made somewhat of an intelligible noise, startled by the recognition, but being able to place the soft voice all the same. "And you're Jenna," he mumbled.

She nodded, pulling the protruding beanie off of her head completely before sitting down next to him in what could only be described as a dainty fashion. "What're you doing out here?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

She let out a giggle, swinging her head and allowing her blonde hair to catch what little light the moon provided them. "Heading home," she clarified, graciously sounding only the tiniest bit defensive about the interrogation. "Your turn."

"I needed some fresh air."

"Okay, that I get. What I'm having a harder time understanding is what you're doing laying in the middle of the road."

Tyler rubbed his hand over his face and chuckled tiredly. "Generally just feeling like shit."

"Oh," Jenna replied, and she actually sounded concerned. "What about?"

He leaned back onto the asphalt again, knees bent and hands over his face. "I yelled at my sister." 

He didn't know how Jenna made out the muffled words, but he assumed she did, as she answered. "Oh. Well, did she deserve to be yelled at?"

"No. Not really, anyway. She's just worried about me, and I fucking know that, I do, but I can't shake how pissed it makes me when she wont trust me. I'm the older brother, _I'm_ supposed to be taking care of _her_ , y'know?"

Jenna leaned back a bit, bracing her hands against the ground as she sighed, "Yeah, I can understand that. You're defensive, and I guess that makes sense." There was an awkward pause of a breath, Jenna running over her next words. "If you don't mind me asking, why do you think she doesn't trust you? I mean, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, obviously. I'm not trying to be nosy."

"No it's fine. I-"

"Tyler?"

"What?"

"Sorry to interrupt you and all, but that cigarette butt is going to end up burning you real soon."

Tyler looked down at his hand, realizing that he still had the last red-hot stub of his smoke clenched between his index and middle fingers. "Shit," he groaned, noting the heat radiating off of the ember before tossing it to the ground and grinding it with his heal. "Thanks."

"No problem. Now, you were saying?" Jenna prodded, clearly a little more eager than she was letting on to hear him spill his life story. Somehow, though, that didn't bother Tyler as much as he would have thought.

"I, um . . . I did something really stupid, a while ago. Y'know, back before everything went to shit. And it fucked her up, and that's a totally understandable thing, but she's still so caught up in it, and it's really not helping me, you know, trying to stop being so obsessed with it."

"How stupid is stupid? Like, on a scale of one to ten how absolutely idiotic are we talking about?"

"Like an eleven," Tyler sighed. 

"Okay, now I have to know," Jenna joked, and Tyler knew that his answer would not be at all what she was expecting. Because she wasn't trying to be intruding or rude or anything of the like, she just assumed it would be a humorous mishap on his part. Of course, the reality of the situation wasn't anything close to that, and Tyler felt the need to make that apparent to her.

So he rolled up his jacket sleeves and held up his arms to her, the moonlight making his secrets public property. But, lucky him, there wasn't currently much in the way _of_ a public, so the only person he had to admit anything to was Jenna. Jenna, a girl he hardly knew yet felt safe, as if she was a diary to dent with pushing down too hard on the pen. And maybe it was just the darkness he was hiding in or the argument still lingering in his house, raptly waiting for his attention, but he still found himself okay with telling her. 

"Oh." Her voice was quiet. "God, Tyler, I wasn't trying to- I didn't think . . . Jesus, I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't do anything." His voice sounded hollow to his own ears.

"I pushed you into telling me, I didn't think it was something so . . . personal, but I should have thought things through before I started making jokes."

"I didn't have to tell you," he sighed, admittedly making a rather good point. "And I didn't expect you to . . . guess or anything." At Jenna's disbelieving and overly apologetic expression, he added, "Really, it's cool."

"So, your sister . . ." 

"Found me, yeah." He itched his wrist, avoiding her eyes and the sympathy in them. "And it kind of screwed my entire family up, which makes sense, looking back . . . but I really wasn't thinking about it, at the time? And I know that makes me sound so awful, and so fucking selfish, and I _was_ , but I . . . I don't know. I felt like shit, and I had for so long and I was just _tired_ and scared and all twisted up in a million knots and I didn't know what else _to do_."

"And now she's scared that you're going to do it again." There was no question in Jenna's voice. 

"Something like that."

"I'm sorry." And there was really nothing else she could say, and Tyler knew that, because this was something only he could fix. But it would take time and an abundance of effort, and Tyler Joseph wasn't the most patient person.

"Thanks."

Silence fell over them, and Tyler couldn't decide if it was of the comforting or awkward variety.

Eventually, she carefully made her way to her feet, gathering up her black beanie and settling it back onto her hair. "I should probably go. Josh'll be getting worried."

"Josh?" At the mention of his name Tyler's interest immediately peaked, and this was by no means lost by Jenna, who was perhaps too observant for her own good. 

"Yeah, I'm crashing at his tonight. Don't worry. It's nothing like _that_." She winked at Tyler, who was immediately glad that the darkness hid any hint of red staining his cheeks. "I'll tell him you said hi."

"Who says I want you to?" Tyler spluttered, indignant and all together awful at concealing his feelings.

"Please," Jenna sighed, not taking what was very obviously force-fed bullshit. "Well, I'm going to go. I wasn't planning to be out this late anyway, but I had to make a detour."

Tyler muttered his goodbyes and watched her make her way down the street, Jenna turning and giving him a full smile and a friendly wave. He waved back, albeit not nearly as enthusiastically.

As soon as she disappeared from sight, Tyler lit another cigarette and sprawled back out on the road, leaving his sleeves rolled up and his mistakes on display.


End file.
